May Is Chocolatey Sweet, Pt. 1

Sorry that I missed a few days of postings, a lot of things had happened in May so far and this is the first morning that I have some time to process and post the occurrences here. But let me assure you now that everything happened so far had been pretty sweet.

Friday night, CuteCub and I had planned to go to the local leather bar for their charity trivia night. A lot of local bars started to have trivia nights, maybe they're trying to revive their businesses in this economical tough times but I have to admit I do enjoy them. This particular trivia game is hosted by James and Toshio who both appeared on an episode of MTV's Can't Get a Date, I guess they're mini-celebrities in our own community. Friendly guys, CuteCub and I had become friends with them.


Toshio and James doing Everything But The Girl's Rollercoaster

For $5, you get to participate in 5 rounds of games and if your team of 4 or less get the most answers, you get a gift bag full of goodies and the gifts get better by each rounds. The questions ranged from favorite categories of "Dead or alive" and "Jew, Gentile or Scientologist" to "Name 3 famous (blank)" or completely irrelevant questions like how many bottles are behind the bar right now. Our team name is Pina Colada because I'm yellow with spiky hair and Cute Cub is white with brown hair all over. Not incredibly smart or funny but in some way still a bit appropriate. (?) I wasn't that proud of my performance Friday night, I completely missed the ball on things like 3 Janet Jackson's songs with the word "Love" in it, which I would know years ago and while I remember watching Kylie Minogue's sister's first music video in Hong Kong back in the days. I don't remember how to spell her name. (Dannii?!? who spell their name like that? I thought it was Dani.)

We were kinda disappointed after 4 rounds of getting 5 out of 10 questions each round and not winning anything even though CuteCub used his artistry to adorn each answer sheets with very cute drawings which I loved but they get crumpled up and thrown away by our host shortly after. But to my surprise we won the 5th round which had the biggest prize of the night. We got some candles, a chocolate bar, a bottle of tequila, a $25 gift certificate at a local AIDS thrift store and a ball stretcher. The chocolate bar got consumed and shared immediately at the bar with other friends and the hunky bartender with a British accent that we both have a crush on, it was very good chocolate, but since the bar was dim, we couldn't tell what brand it was. It's not until much later that I found out it's from a dollar store that I'd be raiding very soon. Since we both don't use candles much, they will be going to CuteCub's mom as a mother's day gift. We're lost on the tequila since we don't drink it, and about the same on the ball stretcher. (looks a bit painful... (Very NSFW)) But we're thankful for the AIDS thrift store certificate since it's one of our favorite store in town.

And that's what we did the next morning, we went to the AIDS Thrift Store (514 Bainbridge Street, Phila, Pa., 19147) to browse. Usually, we go to look for gym t-shirts, DVDs, music and books. The staff there are friendly, all the books are sold at 10% of the jacket price. Once CuteCub got a very old edition of a book in good condition for about a quarter. The money is going to a good cause and we donate our unused stuff too.



After getting some books and DVDs, we went to the Famous 4th Street Deli for lunch and saw some humongous cakes and pastries. Mini hoagie sized eclair and microwave sized cakes. I saw a much discussed Dr. Browns celery flavored soda called Cel-Ray and tried it. It tasted "healthy", not something I looked for in a soda. I don't think I'll have it again, but at least I can say that I've tried. Their regular sized sandwich is bigger than any burgers I've had. I can barely get my mouth around it. The taste was okay and even though it's visually impressive, the difficulty associated with eating it is a problem. There is a zaftig size too, I wonder who orders them and how big they actually are.